


Jean at the Witching Hour

by greerwatson



Category: Jean Robertson Series - Janet Sandison
Genre: Backstory, Canon-related, F/M, Historical, Scotland, Wordcount: Over 1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7164572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old Pillans' story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fawatson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/gifts).



I came to Castleside Farm in 1885, a man not yet thirty, of no background or family to speak of.  I was an incomer to the district; but I knew the work for which I’d been hired, and wanted a fresh start with opportunities to better myself.  Old Wilson had died; and his widow needed help, for she had several daughters, but no sons.

Castleside was a large and prosperous farm.  The house and its yard and outbuildings lay well upslope from the banks of the Loch, with pastures down nearly to the water’s edge.  Like most farming households, they grew the larger part of what was needed. There were hayfields for winter feed, and other land put to potatoes, wheat, and oats for the family.  I was nominally hired as ploughman; but I dealt with all the other heavy field work such as men mostly do.  The kitchen garden was Mrs Wilson’s responsibility, as were the chickens and pigs.  However, you should not get the notion that Castleside was a mere croft.  The main business was dairying; and part of my job entailed rising before dawn and getting the cows in for milking.  The womenfolk dealt with the dairy itself, of course; but it was I who loaded the cart to take the cans down to the railway station, whence the milk went down-the-line for the good burghers of Glasgow to pour on their morning porridge.

On Sunday, we all walked to church and sat together in our usual places in the new gallery, leaving the pews below to the gentry.  I sang the hymns in a good voice that drew the eye of more than one maid; but they were close shepherded by the housekeepers for whom they worked (and, in any case, I had little time to call my own).  The seven older daughters of the Wilson family were also in service, and were granted a few minutes to greet their mother after the sermon.  Still, they did not return often to the farm even when they had more time off—perhaps because, on the rare occasions when they did, Mrs. Wilson promptly put them to work.  As a result, I never came to know any of them more than slightly.

Upslope a ways from the farm was a wall, cutting through the woods on the hill. It was a high, heavy stone wall—not the sort that separates field from field, but mason-built of grey granite, cut and smoothed and fitted, with capstones atop.  This wall obscured most of what lay beyond; but it was possible to see turrets and the tops of trees in the park beyond.  To me, it was obvious that this was the “castle” from which the farm took its name.  One evening, though, as I sat mending a halter by the fire, I said such in idle comment; and Mrs. Wilson began wheezing with laughter and slapped her knee.  Eventually, the youngest daughter, Jessie, told me that Castleside Farm was far older than “that great pile o’ fanciness up hill”, which had only been built by the Duke of Lomond some twenty years earlier.

“Not _this_ Duke,” she added, “but his Da; and must have cost a pretty penny.”

“All those turrets don’t come cheap, not to mention th’enclosure,” added Mrs Wilson, still red-faced from her humour.  “Ran out of funds, His Old Grace did.  Had to sell off land,” and she shook her head.

Selling land is the ultimate heresy to any farmer; and, though I come from south of the border, it had been no different there.  It was clear that—if only from this one matter—the Wilsons had come to have no great respect for the Dukes of Lomond.  Yet the family were by far the largest landowners in the area and had property elsewhere, as well.

“Och, it’s no _old_ family,” the good farmer’s wife scoffed.  “The title was only gi’en ’em back last century.”

She did, however, consider one good thing to have come of the improvements to the Lomond estate, for it was the old Duke who had had a spur of railway built along the shore of the loch.  This direct route to the city had opened the Glasgow market, and thus led to the enlargement of Castleside’s dairy herd.  Furthermore, a curve of fine new houses now graced the uphill land sold by the Duke.  These overlooked the Loch, and had been built by rich folk escaping the bustle of the city.  The domestic needs of their households offered employment opportunities to the local farming families, of which the elder Wilson daughters had taken full advantage.  Down by the station a cluster of shops had sprung up, whose proprietors also made the rounds of the local farms, providing a much greater variety of goods than the old peddlers.  All in all, it had turned Lochfoot into something almost approaching a small town. Indeed, there were rumours that the railway company wanted to buy more land and build an end-of-line depot. I doubt the burghers of Lochview were pleased by the notion, for it would have spoiled the vistas for which they had built their mansions.

Besides the fieldwork, I had responsibility for the local milk round.  The route first took me uphill to the Crescent, where early-rising maids handed over yesterday’s empties and took the day’s fresh milk.  After that, I drove past church and school, dropping off at the rectory before heading to “the Village”, as it was known.  This was a double row of cottages that must have been built shortly before the new Castle, for a break had been left in the great wall surrounding its grounds.  Here the Old Duke had rehoused the families of the men who worked on the Home Farm of the Lomond estates.  Sturdily built, neatly kept, their doors and windows freshly painted each year, the cottages of the Village did not receive the scorn Mrs. Wilson laid on His Grace’s fancy “castle”.  For one thing, she respected the families who lived there:  good workers, she said.  The Home Farm was productive land, and its herds of Cheviots well managed.  I made sure always to have a pleasant smile for the Village wives and a saucy wink for the maids of the Crescent, for it was impressed on me that a surly face does not attract business.  There were several other farmers—albeit with holdings that were more distant—who would cheerfully have become dairymen to the market that Mrs. Wilson saw as her own.

If it were not for me, I do not know how the farm would have fared, and that is the truth. Had Old Wilson had sons or one of the daughters married a farmhand, it would have been a different matter; but, hard though his widow worked (and she seemed never to cease her labour), a woman simply cannot keep a large farm property in fine fettle. Indeed, if Castleside had been a tenant farm, her landlord would undoubtedly have put her out of her home—though, I will say in defence of the Duke, he would probably have found her lodging elsewhere on the estate. (Certainly, there were old folk living in the Village who were pensioners, one way or another. I knew this full well, for I delivered their milk, after all.) Still, he would never have permitted Mrs Wilson to try to run the farm on her own. At least she had help in the farmyard. Unlike the older sisters, Jessie did not go into service. She was needed in the dairy to share the milking, and fed the fowl and pigs as well assisting in the usual care of the house. So that work was dealt with adequately. Still, any farm needs at least one man for the fields, and more would be better. Just the widow and her youngest daughter? Old Wilson and his wife should have had sons, as well as daughters.

However, the matter was moot. Castleside Farm was not a tenancy. It was freehold property, and had been in Old Wilson’s family for generations. Yet, even with just the one ploughman, which was all his widow felt she could afford, it was hard to manage, and must have been so before her husband died, too. I speak here from my own experience, you appreciate.

I could see only two possibilities ahead of them in the long run; and, after I had been at the farm for about a year, I felt confident enough in my position to bring the matter up.

“What will happen when you’re gone?” I asked, seeming idly, but (of course) with much in mind.

“Gone?” said Mrs. Wilson, not getting my drift.

“The farm has been in your husband’s family for years, so I believe; but it’s now only you and Jessie.”

“Well, I’ve no intention o’ going anywhere,” my employer declared.  “So, if it’s your job you’re worrit about, ye needn’t be.”

I let it be—for the time.  A week or so later, though, when the Sunday service was over and she stopped in the churchyard to visit her husband, I accompanied her.

“Some day, you’ll lie beside him, I dare say.”

She looked at me, startled.  Then, perhaps thinking that I offered comfort for her grief, she said, “Aye, that’ll be the way of it; and space left on the stone,” for, in the way of things, only part of the slab was inscribed and part left blank.

“What’ll come of Jessie then?” I asked.

“Och, long before then, I’ll see her settled wi’ a husband to take over the farm,” she said, comfortably enough.  Later on, though, I saw her cast a thoughtful look at her daughter.  Jessie was not the sort to catch a man’s eye—not a bad-looking wench, though no beauty; but she was quiet to the point of seeming sullen.  Nor was there time for courting, not on a farm.  It was no surprise to me that the older daughters preferred their life up the Crescent, where their work was no harder than it would have been at home, and an afternoon to themselves every other week.  Certainly, none had quit her job to help her mother.

After that, I could see that Mrs. Wilson took pains after church to see that Jessie should speak to the eligible men from other farms roundabout.  Still, nothing seemed to come of it.  The girl scarcely spoke; and, as I said, she did not so much come across as shy and demure, as she did sulky.

Now, you will perceive that there was only one man who saw Jessie daily; and that was myself.  Furthermore, the situation was positively traditional:  the apprentice marries his master’s daughter and takes over the business; the ploughman marries the farmer’s daughter and….

So I began my courtship, quiet-like in the evenings, chatting with Jessie rather than her mother as we sat by the fire, or more openly flirtatious when the girl brought me a piece in the fields whilst I was working.  I never pushed it, you understand: the wise bull takes his time before mounting the untried heifer.  I simply made it clear that I had an interest.  It was not long before I caught the tail end of a speculative glance or two from _Mrs._ Wilson, at least.  I would not be surprised if she’d done some praying on her knees before bedtime; and I was quite prepared to be the Lord’s answer.

Harvest that fall was hard.  The cows were still in milk; and there was all the usual work as well as the need to bring in the crops.  The women helped, as they do at such a time of the year; and it was clear that Mrs. Wilson was finding the physical labour hard.  She was none so young, after all:  widow to an old man, and mother of eight:  I was not sure of her age (which is not something one asks), but I reckoned she must be the wrong side of fifty for certain, and quite possibly sixty or more.  On top of that, she had the preserving to do:  vegetables and fruits to be put up in brine or syrup, the slaughtered pig to be turned to ham and bacon.  She was not a woman to complain; but she held her back often, as if it ached.  She looked tired in the early afternoon, and quite exhausted by nightfall.  I thought it an excellent time to speak to her about Jessie.

What she said to her daughter, I do not know.  The next day, though, Jessie brought me my dinner in the field; and her face looked like a summer storm.  Now, the crops had been brought in safely before the weather broke; and I thought to do the same here, too.

“Did you not know I fancied you?” I asked.  “You’re a fine woman, Jessie Wilson; and I reckon you’ll make me a good wife.”

“I never looked to take you for husband,” she said baldly.  “I’ve other hopes.’

“What would they be then?” I said, putting more than a touch of sarcasm in my voice.  “You’re here on the farm all day, every day.  I’ve not seen the young men of Lochfoot crowding round you.”  Then I hesitated, doubting my plan, for a thought occurred to me.  “Were you thinking to go into service when your Ma died, then?”

“I don’t _ever_ mean to leave Castleside,” she declared.  “It’s my home.  It was my Da’s home, and Grandda’s, and before that.  I’m a Wilson.  And Castleside belongs to Wilsons—always has, and always will!”

Which was reassuring.  Now, I thought, I need only leave it to her mother.  _She_ will do the rest of my courting for me.

That night, when the wick was trimmed and the lamp lit, Mrs. Wilson sat down with her mending.  Jessie was knitting socks.  I kept well out of it, over by the fire; but I could hear everything, of course.  It went much as I expected, at least on the part of the mother, who was worldly enough, in the restricted world of the farming community of the Scottish countryside.  After all, it is one thing for a middle-aged widow to hire a ploughman.  It is quite another thing for a nubile lass like Jessie to do so.

Quiet girls can be obstinate.  It took a long time for her mother’s message to get through . I’ll say this for the old woman, she worked hard to save the farm.  If this were to be done, Jessie had to marry.  The sooner the quicker, in fact; and I was there, and willing and able.  I was not always around to hear what Mrs. Wilson said to Jessie, of course, for there is always work to be done on a farm.  Still, often enough when I came through the kitchen, I heard her telling the girl that, if she didn’t wed _someone_ , Castleside would eventually have to be sold.  This would, like as not, be followed by, “and your father would turn in his grave”.  “What will become of you then?” was another favoured tack.  Certainly, I often heard, “If you want to stay on the farm, you know what you have to do. If not him, then find another.”

Naturally, I did my part, sweet-talking the lass when I saw her, making sure I shaved carefully each morning and washed when I came in from the fields.  I bought some macassar oil to slick my hair, and spent good money on a small brooch to give her on her birthday.  (I never saw her wear it.)

Winter came, though lightly at first.  There was frost on the ground when I rose at dawn; and, like as not, the water in the jug would have a thin crust of ice to break before I could pour it in the bowl to wash—though there was always some hot on the stove in the kitchen to take off the edge and make shaving easier.  I dubbined my boots yet again, and wore a sweater under my coat when I saw to the stock.  Most of the cows had dried up, as they do that time of year; but there were still a few in milk.

It’s women’s work, dealing with the dairy.  So I knew that Jessie would be coming.  After I’d brought in the cows, she came with a pail.  As she was reaching for the stool, I grabbed her from behind.  She gave a little yelp.

“Don’t be so shy, Jessie,” I said, and bent round to kiss her cheek.  She turned her head away, and I bumped my lips on her ear.

“Look!” I said sharply, drawing back a bit.  “I’ll do more than kiss you when we’re wed.”

“I dinna _want_ your courtin’,” she said stubbornly, and pulled away.

“Shall I tell the rector to call the banns?” I asked.  “Or should your mother speak to him?  You know she wants this as much as I do.”

“Give over.”  She set the stool down beside the nearest cow in milk.

I strode over, grabbed her arm, and hauled her to her feet.  As I did, the startled cow kicked out, catching her on the leg.

“Christ God Almighty!” she cried, as it buckled.  For a moment, she sagged down, then straightened on the other leg.  I boxed her ear—for swearing at all as much as at me.  (Her mother would have washed her mouth out with carbolic.)

“Don’t talk like that,” I chided her.

“Leave me be.”

“You’ll not talk like that once we’re wed.”

“I told you, I’ll never!”

“Then what’s your choice?  Go or stay:  pick one.  There’s no point in dallying, for it’ll come to that sooner or later; and, if you decide you want to stay, then we must wed; and best wed sooner than later—it’ll give you a chance to get used to me.”  As she continued to glare, the side of her cheek reddening, I added, “I’ll not make you a bad husband, Jessie. No worse than another man, anyway; and what other man have you?”

She looked at me silently, her eyes round.  For a moment, I thought she was going to cry.  Then she simply pulled herself free, and said, “I have the cows to milk, Peter.  Go you ben the house; I’ll be in later.”

Seeing her quieter, I left; and a while later she did, indeed, come in.  She stayed in the kitchen helping her mother with supper; and, as I went out to deal with the horse, I didn’t hear what was said. However, after we’d all eaten, she sat with us in front of the fire, doing no work (for which her mother forbore to chide her). Then, she said suddenly, with no hint of what was in her mind, “I’ll just go outside a bit.”

We thought she’d gone to the outhouse, as anyone might before bed.  I swear, on any bible or holy book you care to bring me (not that I’ve set foot in a church for years), it never crossed the mind of either of us, neither her mother nor me, what it was she planned to do.  It’s what we said at the inquest, both of us; and it was the truth.

There was a camp of tinkers up near the Old Dam.  It was they who found her there, next morning when they went to fetch water.  They pulled her to the shore, and sent someone down the village to fetch the policeman.  He knew her, drowned though she was, and came to tell us.

Well, it was brought in as accident:  no one could prove it was suicide, for she left no note; and it did, at least, save her public name (though everyone knew the truth, for why else would she go up the Old Dam at that time of night).  She was buried in the churchyard; and rector said as much as he could without perjuring himself in the eyes of God.  No one understood _why_ she would do it:  it was a great mystery all round the neighbourhood; and there were the whispers that no one said loud enough for us to have to notice.  What her sisters thought I don’t know; but one of them lost her position and had to come back to the farm for a fortnight; and then she and the one next in age to her both went down-the-line, saying that Lochfoot was no place to be a Wilson till the talk died down.

After that, their mother seemed to dwindle.  She knew, I think, that none of her living daughters would return with a husband in tow, ready to take over Castleside and the dairy business; and that, of course, meant that the farm would be sold out of the family.  It was not her own family, of course, not by birth:  she was Wilson by marriage.  Still, it had been a long marriage; and she had come to identify with her husband’s interests and those of his family.

We spent long and lonely evenings, she and I, sitting in that large room by the fireplace, she at her knitting or darning or sewing and me with some mending or other, or conning over the accounts of the farm, which she left more and more to me, for I was always good with figures.  (It was a fine farm, and made a fair bit of money.)

“If only she’d had the sense God gave her,” she said more than once.  “I’d have left the farm in your hands, yours and hers, and been glad to see it all safe for the next generation.”

“I’d have cared for it as if I were your son in truth,” I assured her, “and not a mere son-in-law, as it were.  It’d be Jessie’s and mine, after all; and our children’s after us.”

Her eyes drifted to the fire; and what might-have-beens she saw in the flames I couldn’t say.

It was a hard winter that year.  It snowed, more than once: snow on snow, with cleared paths only between the buildings where I took the shovel to them.  Beasts need tending whatever the weather.  Yet, in some ways, they were the lucky ones.  Close in the byre, they kept warm and dry.  In the house, it was another matter  The place had draughts, so that the heat toasted you one side by the fire while the other chilled.  Beds were icy even with a hot brick in to take the edge off.  So it was not at all surprising that Mrs. Wilson came down with a cold, nor yet that I took it myself shortly after.  Still, she insisted on going to church that Sunday, as she did every Sunday.  Afterwards, she lingered a while.

“I’ll just bide a wee while wi’ them before I go,” she told me.  “You head back to the farm.”

I refused:  the weather threatened another storm; and I would not leave her to make her own way home.

“In that case, you go ben the kirk,” she told me.  “It’ll be dry to the feet there, if nothing more.”

I waited in the porch, following her with my eyes as she broke through the snow, going round to the familiar spot where her husband lay, and the new heap of earth, as yet unturfed and without headstone, where Jessie was buried.  The wind was picking up; but I stood there.  In the end (and long after everyone else had hurried away), she came back and told me she was ready to go.

That night, it was clear that she was worsening; and the next day she ran a fever.  I did not want to leave her, even to fetch the doctor.  There were home remedies in the pantry; and I got them as she directed.

The following day, she was finding it difficult to breathe.  Each intake came with a stab; and she drew only shallow gasps, quick and slight, lest the pain get worse.  Her throat was sore; and now and then she coughed, her face twisting as the spasm caught her.  In the afternoon, she said faintly, “I wish she’d married you.”

“Too late for that,” I said.  I went out, down to the town, and rousted the doctor from his surgery.  He came with his bag, heard her breathing through his stethoscope, and called it pleurisy.

The next morning, early, she told me to go down-the-line to fetch a solicitor.  Fearing to leave her alone for so long, I bethought me of the houses on Lochview Crescent, and recalled one whose owner was in the legal profession.  I’d never met the man himself, of course; but I was emboldened to go to the door of The Beeches (as the house was named), where I explained my request to his butler—yes, a very butler!—and Mr. Dawson granted me an audience. And if that seems a grandiose way to put it, well … I can only say that, at the time, that is the way it seemed to me; and, I dare say, to himself as well.  And most certainly to his butler!  Still, the important thing was that Mr. Dawson agreed to drive in his carriage to Castleside Farm with his clerk, who was come there from his office with some papers.  I was not permitted to be present at his interview with Mrs. Wilson; but afterwards he came out, saying that, if things should turn out badly, then I should send word.

She died the next day, near dawn.

There was a funeral, rather larger than that for poor Jessie.  All the farmers came from miles round, for Castleside and its Wilsons had been familiar neighbours to them for generations. The five daughters in service in Lochfoot all were granted time off sufficient to attend, though the two who had gone to Glasgow did not show up until the evening, after their day’s work was over.  We went into the parlour, which seemed chill and empty without its mistress, and sat stiffly for the reading of the will, while Mr. Dawson presided from the armchair that had been Old Wilson’s own, and never used since his death.

After he had finished, there was silence—and accusation in the silence as they all looked to me.  “I don’t believe it,” said one of the daughters.

“We’ll fight!” quoth the next (though what money she had to hire a solicitor of her own is another matter).

“That would be a waste of time and effort,” declared Mr. Dawson, and sat back in the chair with his fingers steepled before him.  “I drew the will up myself, and saw it signed by Mrs. Wilson, your mother, in my presence.  And witnessed by my clerk.  It’s a document as sound and secure as Castle Rock in Edinburgh itself.”

You may ask if I had known of the contents of the will; and I answer truthfully that I had not.  As I said before, I was sent, quite properly, out of the room when Mrs. Wilson spoke to her lawyer; and I did not see him again until he left, at which time he spoke to me only a little. However, I must admit that I had my suspicions—not least since, at one point, I had listened at the door and heard the word “witness”, yet not been called to serve as such myself.

Mr. Dawson sat there in Old Wilson’s armchair.  He wore an expensive suit, the likes of which I'd never be able to afford, with a gold watch and fob across his waistcoat, and a look of assurance on his face that cowed the black flock of daughters.  They had no place in the farmhouse, not any longer—and they knew it, and cawed like ravens.  Once, though, once, they had sat there by right; yes, and had their rights, though they had given them up of their own free will.  He, though: he was as out of place in that parlour as the old Queen herself would be, were she to alight from her carriage and ask for a draught of milk from one of our cows.

 _My_ cows.

Yes, my cows.  The will that Mrs. Wilson had made so few days past, the will that Mr. Dawson had just read aloud to us all, left Castleside and all the property to me.

I exulted:  it was mine! all mine!  And I had won it without marriage, simply by offering the widow something that her own family denied her:  a future for her farm.  So now, I owned it all, the farm and the house and the herd:  footloose no longer, but still fancy free.  In time, I reckoned, I would find myself a wife—and one who was willing, too—and she’d bring me yet more good fortune, even as much as Mr. Dawson himself.


	2. Chapter 2

Any farmer must have known that the Wilson daughters were unfit to farm Castleside; but there was, nevertheless, a general feeling that somehow I had cheated the seven of them out of their inheritance.  Though little was said to my face, I caught the tail end of looks after church.  I chose to ignore them.  What good would it do?  Folks will think what they think, whatever one may say.  There’s usually no way to confront and confound them directly.

Besides, I was busy.  To be master of one’s own farm is a fine thing; but to try to manage the place alone is nigh-on impossible.  Oh, for a few weeks, I coped … up to a point.  I knew enough to use a broom or fry an egg (not that the hens were laying); but, then, it was winter, after all.  Come calving and ploughing, I’d not have time to do the women’s work as well as my own.  I knew, therefore, that I would have to hire someone.  That would take money—and, though, I had, of course, the saving of my own wages, that didn’t mean there was much on hand, for it takes time to settle the details of a will.  (Fortunately, a woman is paid more in her keep than in coin.)  At any rate, I felt compelled to put an advertisement in the local newspaper, and a few days later received response from a widow in a village close down-the-line.  Mrs. Taggart, her name was.  She came for an interview, bringing a reference from the rector of her church.  I do not think she can have heard the rumours _before_ her arrival.  All was settled between us therefore; and she moved into the bedroom that had been Mrs. Wilson’s.  Unfortunately, like most women, she was inclined to gossip—I assume with the neighbours after church that Sunday, for it was then that she cooled towards me.  Still, she made no attempt to break her contract and try her luck elsewhere; and I found her to be a hard-worker.  She kept the place well.

All this meant that, as the long winter drew gradually towards spring, I was, on the one hand, relieved to know that house and yard were in capable hands.  Yet, on the other hand, I spent long chilly evenings in the company of a woman who scarcely spoke to me save of necessary housekeeping.  By the time the flowers were on the apple trees, I had decided that, for the sake of my comfort, I would need to find a wife.

Thus, in my Sunday best, I approached the daughters of the local farming community after church, when they stopped to chat in the kirkyard.  I found, though, that there was still that lingering feeling against me, such as had put Mrs. Taggart off.  I dare say if Jessie and I had wed, and inherited the farm in the natural course of events, things would have been different—though, no doubt, the local folk would still have felt I’d done well out of it (as, I must admit, I had).  At any rate, I was not quite as welcome as I had thought I should be.  Only one or two of the older girls would tarry to talk, and even they left when their family did.  Furthermore, it did not take me long to get the measure of each of them and tell that they were truly interested in marrying Castleside rather than myself.

I might nevertheless have settled for one of them, had I not, one day when making deliveries to the Village, been met at the side door by a pretty young maid whom I had never met before, and who was certainly not Mrs. Gair, who was a stout matron. I inquired her name.

“Mattie,” she said, with a bright smile.

“Now, I _know_ I’ve not seen you around here before,” I said, with an appreciative smile.  “You’re not the sort one forgets.”

“Oh, I work up at the Castle,” she said.  “This is my parents’ house.  I come back on my afternoon off.”

“And thus it is my great good fortune to meet you,” I said, as sweet as sweet, and offered her my hand.  She looked a little startled (for she was no great age, and likely seldom had that courtesy afforded her), and then quickly shook it.

“I’m Peter,” I added.  “Peter Pillans, from Castleside Farm.”

“Pillans?  Now there’s a name I’ve not heard before,” she said, but with mere curiosity and no ill will in her tone.

“North-country England,” I told her.  “That’s where I’m from.  A common enough name there; but it does get questions hereabouts.  I inherited the farm back at the turn of the year.”

“My condolences on your loss,” was her immediate response.

Now, she was the first person in Lochfoot who had thought to say such a thing to me.  It made me look favourably on her; and I asked when her next afternoon off might be.  She told me, with a smile.  And so began our courtship.

The next Friday, I presented myself at Briar Cottage in my Sunday suit, neatly pressed.  My hat had been freshly brushed and my shoes polished.  I wanted to make a good impression, not only on Mattie but on her Ma.  I was asked in and shown to the parlour, where tea and scones were offered.  After a half an hour or so, Mrs. Gair was impressed with my respectability (and, no doubt, my prospects), and permitted the two of us to dally a while in the garden.  I could not stay very much longer, of course, since the needs of the stock drew me home.  However, Mattie and I were now considered to be walking out, as they say; and, after that, I saw her regularly, in between ploughing the fields and sowing seed, overseeing the calving, digging the vegetable patch for Mrs. Taggart, and sitting up one night with a shotgun when a fox lurked round the henhouse.  It was not long before we _were_ walking in truth—wandering the woods outside the walls of the estate, talking (as lovers to) and sometimes stopping for a little canoodling, though she always drew this to an end when I let my hands gently drift downwards.

So I courted Mattie.  By the height of the summer, she was more sure of me and grew bolder; and there was a time or two that autumn when we retreated from public sight to a hidden dell within the Castle grounds, which encompassed a good-sized wood overseen by only one gamekeeper and his boy.  What passed between her and me on those afternoons was a matter of nature, if I may so put it.  If there are those who feel we did wrong, well, all I can say is that we both—and I say _both_ —were making assumptions about our conjunct future.  Still, there is no denying that the banns had not yet been called, let alone the wedding contract signed.

It was late in August that, going my usual milk round up Lochview Crescent, I met the daughter of one of the rich burghers—indeed perhaps the richest, since Laurelbank was slightly, but noticeably, the largest of the houses on the hill.  Its owner, Mr. Charles Simpson, was something in the City, and came and went down-the-line on a daily basis.  His family comprised wife and three daughters, and a son whom I never met since he was away at school, being the youngest by quite a bit.  None of the daughters could honestly be described as young; but all three were still of marriageable age, especially with the dowries that no doubt were settled on them.  In my milk deliveries, of course, _I_ dealt with the cook or kitchenmaid.  However, a place like that would doubtless keep a housemaid or two at the very least, as well as a gardener and his boy, if not also a housekeeper or butler, and a lady’s maid for Mrs. Simpson.  One need only look at the size of the building to see that the family must have a fair few pounds to their name!  (Meanwhile, though I’d never seen more than the turrets of the Castle, I was fully aware that the Duke and his Family were of another order entirely.  _Their_ staff—of whom Mattie was one of the youngest and least—surely numbered ten times that of a mere mansion such as the Simpsons’.)

All of this means, of course, that it was by purest chance that I ever encountered one of the daughters:  Jessie was her name. (Yes, coincidentally, the same as that of my erstwhile bride-to-be.)  She was the youngest—though not, I must in honesty say, the prettiest, which accolade must be bestowed upon Cathie, the one in the middle of the family by age.  Still, if Jessie suffered with the inheritance of her father’s firm, large nose, she nevertheless had the fresh skin and shining hair of her relative youth.  Having taken a childish romantic notion to see the sun rise, she had been leaning out of one of the bedroom windows that overlooked the garden at the back of the house.  How she came to drop her handkerchief I do not know; but I saw it fluttering, unnaturally white, as I drew up the cart.  It caught the corner of my eye; and I turned my head in time to see it catch in the lower branches of a bush.  The thing was clearly too large to be a butterfly, and too small (and too flat) to be a dove.  With a glance round to make sure that no one would be likely to complain of my trespass, I walked off the path to find out what it was.  When I picked it up, I could see it must belong to a lady, for it was lace-edged cambric; but, as there was no name embroidered, I’d no idea to which daughter of the house it might belong.  I thought only to hand it to the cook.  However, by the time I had walked to the back door, Jessie had spotted my actions and come running lightly downstairs to collect her property herself.

I think no one who saw me in my younger days would deny that I had a reasonably prepossessing appearance, even somewhat handsome.  I returned the handkerchief under the safe eyes of Cook; but _some_ impulse brought Jessie rushing out of the house and down the path to the lane just I was about to cluck to the horse to move on.  Of course, she made the excuse of wanting to thank me again; but we got to talking, albeit briefly.  Then, that Sunday after church, she slipped off on some excuse and once again had a friendly word with me—only briefly, of course, for her parents were only yards away, chatting with the rector as people do after service.

To me, conversation with Jessie Simpson was no more than courtesy, of course.  I was courting Mattie, with the honorable intention of wedding her (and sooner rather than later, be it said).  Castleside needed a mistress.  If our courtship was slow, it was bound by the schedule of her afternoons off, not to mention the coming of winter, which meant that for several months we were often constrained to meet in her parents’ kitchen.  Only with spring were we once again able to resume our longer, more fruitful walks outside the Village.

So far, though, Mattie had refused to come to see her future home for fear of wagging tongues.  After all, though everyone knew that I had hired Mrs. Taggart, no one in the Village could know for sure whether I would have my housekeeper there to keep the proprieties; and Mattie had her good name to consider.  In June, though, I persuaded her to come with her mother for tea.  The date was set for the next Saturday afternoon; and I told Mrs. Taggart to prepare a decent spread, for I wanted to impress.  Indeed, knowing that I was courting, she outdid herself in her baking, producing no fewer than three types of cake, as well as the usual buttered bread, and scones and jam.  Mattie and Mrs. Gair tucked in heartily (as I would expect of decent common folk with no dainty airs and pretensions) and paid compliments to Mrs. Taggart on the lightness of the scones.

Afterwards, I took the two of them out to show them around, for I was proud of the farm and wanted to show it off.  Yes, I admit, I was proud of the work that I had put into it, the fine dairy stock and the fields starting to ripen for harvest.  Also, of course, I knew that it was my position as Castleside’s owner that made the Gairs see me as suitable to court their daughter.  So I walked them down to see the herd and, though Mrs. Gair hung back, took Mattie into the field, walking her round the placid cows lying at cud.  If she, too, were reluctant, I didn’t notice.  Or I took it, perhaps, as unwillingness to disturb the beasts with the proximity of a stranger.

When we walked back through the yard, I took the pair of them straight to the dairy, since that would be Mattie’s primary care once we were wed.  There was a wondering look in her eye, which I took for admiration at the size of the place.  Mrs. Taggart kept it spotless, as one must.  The walls inside were freshly whitewashed (which I had done the previous week); the floor was scrubbed and sanded, and the cans scalded daily.

A hen scuttled close past our feet as we came back out; and Mattie shied like a horse at a haunted crossroad.  Startled by the suddenness, was all I thought.  When she barely stepped inside the henhouse, I put it down to the fact that most of the birds were out and around, pecking after corn.

“Let me show you the pigs,” I said, and led the way.

The sow was large, certainly, but always gentle for her kind; the shoats were growing and active, but no more than young pigs ever are.  Any farm girl would handle them easily: it was not as though it were the boar.  (In fact, we did not keep one at Castleside, but hired from a farm a few miles away when the sow was ready to breed.)  I reached out and patted the hairy back, and the sow turned her head with a snort.  “She’ll get used to you quickly enough,” I assured Mattie.

But my nigh-on affianced bride-to-be did not copy my action, as I expected.  Rather, she made the excuse that she wanted to ask Mrs. Taggart the secret of the lightness of her scones.  With a slightly worried glance back at me, Mrs. Gair followed her daughter inside.

I gave the sow a last slap on her plump side.

It may seem to you that I was remarkably slow; but I truly did not grasp that there was a problem—not during the last half hour of their visit to Castleside; nor as I walked the pair of them round the curve of the road to the Village; nor the next day, when I met them at church, and Mattie hurried off with the other maids from the Castle, while Mrs. Gair seemed troubled, yet said nothing to me about the cause.  Furthermore, over the next few days I did not expect to see Mattie at all:  girls in service were expected to work hard for their keep back then; not like these modern factory workers who go idly off home at the end of a shift.  So it was not until her next afternoon off that I discovered the rocks on which my barque had foundered.

I presented myself at Briar Cottage bright and early, washed and brushed, with clothes tidy and pressed.  (I do know how a young man should go courting.)  The door was opened by Mrs. Gair.  To my surprise, she did not ask me in, as she usually did. Instead, she turned her head to call inside, “Yes, you _do_ have to see him, my lass.  You’ll tell him yourself, in person and in private.  Take him for a walk, why don’t you?”

Reluctantly, Mattie appeared behind her, with a look on her face as sulky and sullen as Jessie Wilson when I had been courting _her_.  A protest was countered firmly by her mother, who gave her a little shove out of the house and shut the door behind her.

“What is it you have to tell me?” I asked.

“Not here on the step for all to overhear,” said Mattie, in a low voice.

She led me along the road out of the village, a route we had taken many a time before.  However, when I thought we might drift off to the woods (as we had done often enough), she shook her head.  “I’ve something to say,” she said; “and it’ll not help if you start kissing me.  For I fear I’d be kissing you back.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.  By now, I could tell that something was amiss, of course; but I still had no idea what it might be.  “Did I say something?  Do something?  What is it?”

“The farm,” said Mattie.  “It’s the farm.”

“What of it?”

She stopped.  “I’ll cook for you and clean for you, of course,” she said.  “Any girl expects to do that for her man when she’s wed.  But there’s no way I’m milking one of those cows of yours—and, from what your Mrs. Taggart says, that is a part of being your wife.”  A puzzled look came over her face (and no doubt was matched by my own).  “I thought it was _you_ was the farmer,” she said.  “The farm is yours, after all; and you’ve been dealing with it on your own.  Why can’t _you_ deal with the cows—yes, and the pigs and the hens and all that—and leave me to manage just the house, as I should.”

“But what of the dairy?” I broke in.  “That’s women’s work!  _You_ know that:  dairying has always been women’s work!  And the beasts in the yard, too, mostly—certainly the care they need when I’m in the fields:  I can’t be in two places at once.”

From the look on her face, it was clear that none of this was as obvious to her as it was to me.  Truly puzzled now, I added, “There isn’t a farm in the valley where the wife doesn’t do her share of the farm work.  It takes a lot to keep a farm.”

“Well, _I’ve_ never killed a chicken in my life,” declared Mattie.  “Nor fed a pig.  Nor my Ma, neither.”

I looked at her in surprise.

“Well, look around you,” she said, rousing herself to anger.  (God knows what any passer-by would have thought of her vehemence.  We were, of course, standing right in the road, with the great wall of the Castle Estate to our left.  Anyone could have come along.)  I looked around, as she bade me.

“Och, back there,” she said, irritated at my obtuseness, and gestured back the way we’d come.  “You’ve seen the cottage.  You’ve seen the Village.”

I looked at her blankly.

“Come on, Peter!  Have you ever seen a chicken run around in the street, in the Village there?  Or a sty back of the house, with a pig fed slops?”

I’d never thought about it.  Out of the kitchen window at Briar Cottage I’d seen the garden, with its vegetable patch and apple tree; I’d not looked further, nor closely.  If I’d thought (which I’d not), I’d have assumed that, somewhere beyond what was right there under my eyes, there must be the usual yard.

“Oh, you _stupid_ man!” she cried.  “Do you think His Grace wants the smell of pigs around the estate, or chickens under the wheels of his carriage?  Why do you think the shopkeepers send their vans round?  Why do _you_ deliver milk?!”

What could I say?  It was, of course, perfectly true that I’d never had sight nor scent of livestock in or about the cottages of the Village.  Yet Mr. Gair worked on the Home Farm!  It had never occurred to me that there could be, anywhere in Scotland, a farmhand’s daughter who would not know how to milk a cow, clean a coop, or handle swine.  “Village”?  How deceptive to call it that!  She was no more use than a townie.

Then I thought, be fair to her, working in the kitchens at the Castle, she could no doubt cook and bake, pickle and preserve.  But, in a wife, I needed more.

I stared dumb, cursing my false assumptions.  She ranted, making me a fool.

Finally, I came to my senses, turned on my heel and walked back to Castleside.

So that was that.  Mattie and I never did become formally affianced.  Nor did ill will come to me in the neighbourhood from our parting.  Not all courtships end in marriage, after all.


	3. Chapter 3

My feelings upon breaking it off with Mattie you can doubtless imagine.  I had been made a fool, though not in the eyes of the world, for no one else had been privy to the details of our argument.  Her mother (and doubtless her father, as well) knew the truth, but kept it to themselves, if only from chagrin at their daughter’s feckless loss of a good husband.  I was angry—at myself as much as her—and disappointed at the loss of the marriage that Castleside needed.  Still, I could also, at least at times, admit to myself that none of this was by any actual ill intent on her part.  We had both made false assumptions.

A couple of weeks later, Jessie Simpson spoke to me once again after church, and pressed into my palm a little folded note.  Automatically, I slipped it into my pocket, for I did not want to draw attention by opening it in public.  When I got home and looked at it, I found directions to a secret rendez-vous.  She had set time and place—at Laurelbank, of course, for the likes of the Simpson daughters did not go stravaiging round the town on their own.  She wished us to meet in their back garden: not near the house, but at the far end where bushes would conceal us from the view of any servant coming out from the kitchen.  It was fairly overgrown there; and the gardeners seldom came.  In other words, it was by the back lane, close to where I parked the cart when delivering milk; and, as such, I could only agree that it was a place well chosen.

More curiosity than anything else drew me to that first rendez-vous.  I did not know what Miss Jessie (for so the servants addressed her) wanted from me.  In fact, it rapidly became clear from her glowing eyes and eager words that her desire was for romance.

Now _you_ may ask why a girl from Lochview Crescent should seek romance in my own person; but that was not a question I asked myself.  After all, before coming to Castleside, I had never had difficulty attracting the fair sex.  Indeed, I would say that (save for the Wilson girl), I had no difficulty as a ladies’ man even now, except when prior ill talk prejudiced the neighbourhood against me.  I had no dislike of the fair sex, quite the contrary.  Though its younger members often seem unable to judge their own best interests, women can often grow worthy of respect in their own sphere.  Take Mrs. Wilson, for instance.  She was a hard worker who set a good table, ran a clean neat dairy, and kept her yard and garden well.  (If she had a failing, it was as a mother; but, in that, I would say rather that she was failed by her daughters.)  As a farmwife, she was a model that others could well copy.

So, if I had a question, it was not why Miss Jessie’s interest but why _mine_?  Why should I, Peter Pillans, be interested in courting a girl from Lochview Crescent?  And I should think that this is a question that you, too, should be asking.  After all, the same disabilities that disbarred Mattie Gair from my consideration as bride must surely apply even more to Miss Jessica Simpson.  Judging by what I had seen of the households up the hill, I doubted she’d ever so much as made herself a cup of tea, let alone a good dinner to fill a man at noon; and it was certain that she’d never milked a cow.

To me, though, it was immediately obvious that Jessie would bring to our marriage something other than the skills of a farmwife.  By now, through the talk of the town, I knew Mr. Simpson to be something big in Industry in Glasgow, with money enough to build Laurelbank and keep his lady wife and their daughters in the fine clothes they wore to church, as well as whatever else they hung in their large wardrobes.  If I recall correctly, I think Jessie said they had seven servants; and they certainly owned a carriage and pair.  I could see for myself the large grounds of the house; and all that land was for their own private use, with none put to crop or grazing.  Jessie spoke to me once—merely in passing and not to impress—of her father’s collection of silver (all sterling, not plate, I’m sure), and the bespoke portrait in oils that hung on one of the walls of the house.  Indeed, they even had a suit of armour in the front hall, as though Laurelbank were an ancient castle!  Why they did so, I can’t say:  the family fortune was made in factories.  Then, again, perhaps that was the point.  Perhaps Mr. Simpson hankered after a fine family tree the way I hankered after a suit of clothes like his—or like Mr. Dawson’s, with a fob watch in solid gold to grab attention of all.

So what Jessica Simpson would bring to Castleside was money.  That’s the short of it.  Upon her marriage, she would have money settled on her.  Granted, it would no longer pass to me by right of marriage; but then I was canny enough to suspect that her family would, even before [the Act](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/44-45/21/enacted) was passed, have tied it up so that I couldn’t touch it.  The income, though: that she would have; and a good income, too.  Once we were wed, I’d be able to afford to keep on Mrs. Taggart to run the house and dairy, and perhaps hire a maid to help her and a man to assist with the stock and fieldwork.

As you can see, then, marriage to Jessie would be _good_ , both for me and for Castleside.  And, if she did have her father’s nose, it was no matter:  one does not choose a bride for her beauty.  We’d likely have sons; and that big nose would look just fine on them.

And so I turned to courting again.

Unlike Mattie, whose days off came regularly but infrequently, Jessie could slip out to see me any morning she rose early enough to catch me on my rounds.  Her frequent coincidence with my arrival with the cart did not surprise me:  a farmer’s wife rises early; and I took it for granted.  Perhaps my failure to comment piqued Jessie; but, if so, she never said.  The horse stood patiently between the shafts; we canoodled most discreetly in the bushes; and the milk delivery waited until we were ready to part.  I should add that Jessie was no wanton—indeed, I should judge her quite innocent in the ways of man and maid—and I had no wish to frighten her.  So I rarely did more than hold her hand, and stroke it while we talked.  As for our conversation: well, we talked a lot; but of nothing, really, or everything.  She wanted to escape her domineering father and her mother’s social ambitions; I wanted to escape the gossip of the town, lest it poison her against me.  Together we found our own private idyll, if only for a few minutes each day.

Naturally, it was not long before we craved the opportunity to meet for longer; but it was obvious to both of us that Jessie could not possibly visit the farm, nor even stroll along a country lane.  After the custom of the time, she was never let outside the house without the company of one or both of her sisters, or at least a maid to walk with her.  Yet despite these constraints, with which she had lived all her life, it was she who came up with a solution.  Jessie Simpson could be bold when she wanted.  In truth, it was _she_ who courted _me_ , from the first time she ran after me, holding the handkerchief I had returned, right up to the scheme she contrived for us to meet in Glasgow.

Down-the-line was not a place I frequented.  I’ve been there many times in the way of business in the last couple of decades; but I was not a city lad, by birth or upbringing, and it was difficult for me to take the time from the farm, go down to the railway station and buy a ticket, and then travel to a veritable metropolis.  Still, I was never a shy or nervous man; and, by dint of asking my way at the great central railway station, taking the tram, and then inquiring from a policeman on point duty, I made my way to the destination that Jessie had described to me:  the house of a married woman who was a friend of long-standing.  This woman, Minnie, knew our purpose, of course, and no doubt thought—in the frivolous way of the idle rich—that to help Jessie meet her beau in secret was some great romantic adventure.  When I arrived, I found that I was obviously expected.  A servant at the door gave me entrance without asking my business, simply on my name.  I was shown into the parlour, where Jessie was sitting with her friend; and then, after eager introductions, Minnie left the two of us on our own.  For the first time, we were free to go out walking together.  Of course, there were a fair few people on the street, even in such a rich part of the city: it is not as though we were actually _alone_ together at any time.  Still, we felt very much on our own.  The maid who had accompanied Jessie to Glasgow was gabbing with Minnie’s servants in the hall in the basement; Minnie herself remained behind in a drawing room.  We therefore had a good hour to ourselves, strolling the pavement until we came to a park, and then wandering along the paths that wound through the close-clipped grass, by well-spaced, well-grown trees, past the neat curves and islands of flower beds filled with marigolds and geraniums.

Jessie would dearly have loved us to meet every day.  Of course, there was no way I could spare the time from the farm. Nor, I dare say, would her family have remained unsuspicious had she visited Minnie that frequently:  daily trips would certainly have brought comment.  She was desperate for our liaison not to be discovered, and understood that we had to ration ourselves.  Nevertheless, I went down-the-line more often than I probably should:  at least two or three times a week, as I recall.  Away from her family, Jessie felt a measure of confidence.  She confided her hope that, at some time—admittedly some quite indefinite time, in a future that she could not quite envisage—her family would be ready to entertain our engagement.  She loved me so much, she said, that she could not imagine that they would not feel likewise if they could only meet me and get to know me as she did.  (This, mark you, while still taking pains that they should _not_ meet me!)

It was a happy time for both of us.

What Minnie thought of it all, I do not know.  I barely spoke to her, beyond the sort of courtesy that people of her sort expect; yet, without her connivance, we would never have been able to meet so often.  I think romance is dear to all women’s hearts, and never more so than when they live in an idle paradise of wealth.  What neither she nor Jessie realized, though, is that, secret though it all may have been from the rest of the Simpson family, our romance was well known to the servants.  Jessie’s dawn excursions from the house could hardly fail to be marked by the staff as she went down the garden to meet me.  The maid who accompanied her to Glasgow knew perfectly well that, while she dallied in the kitchen, her mistress was out walking with me.  Minnie’s own servants passed the word to those in the neighbourhood, as the Simpsons’ did in Lochfoot.  In other words, Jessie’s family (and, I dare say, the owners of the other mansions on Lochview Crescent) were about the only people who _didn’t_ know that she and I were walking out together.  Certainly, Mrs. Taggart was well aware of it. More than once, she broke her usual silence to bode our future ill.

Some weeks after my first trip down-the-line, I returned from a pleasant hour in Glasgow to be told by my housekeeper that my courtship of Jessie must come to an end.  There had been a visit to Castleside from a tearful Mattie.  Though she had not admitted why she had come, Mrs. Taggart was no young girl, but “had eyes in her head”, as she put it.  She took an unreasonable satisfaction, in my view, in telling me that, in her opinion, “the Gair lass” was in the family way.

The following day, it was Mattie’s mother who came to the farm, and confirmed this.  It was only a matter of time, she said, and not much time, either, before the girl’s condition would be obvious to the staff at the Castle.  “You must wed,” Mrs. Gair said firmly, “and the sooner the better.  Then she can give in her notice in the proper way.”

I looked at her, silent for a long enough time to make her feel awkward.

“You owe it to Mattie,” she said finally.  “You know you’re the father.”

This I didn’t deny.

I didn’t confirm it either, mind; but I didn’t doubt that it was true.  Oh, I know that denial—accompanied by the suggestion that the child must be another man’s—is the usual way that a man tries to evade his responsibilities.  However, that is to assume that the man would otherwise feel compelled to _accept_ the girl and her babe as his responsibiity.  I did not.  I _could_ not consider it my duty to marry her.  My reservations regarding Mattie as wife still held:  she’d simply not make a suitable mistress of Castleside.

“Would you like some tea?” I said finally.  I said it quite politely.  “I’ll ask Mrs. Taggart to make a pot.”

Mrs. Gair looked at me closely. What she saw in my face I can’t be sure; but I doubt if it was what she hoped to see. At any rate, she said, “I’ll not take your hospitality till I know you’ll do right by my lass.” And then, after a pause that I did not fill, she added, “I think it’ll be my husband who’ll be coming by tomorrow.”

“I’ll not be here,” I said on impulse. “I’m going down-the-line on business.”  (This had not been my prior intention, mind, for Jessie and I had not arranged to meet so soon.  What I would do in the City once I got there I had no idea.  I _should_ be at Castleside.  There was work to be done on the farm.)

Evidently rumour had reached the Village.  Mrs. Gair’s face turned stony.  “Have it that way if you will,” she said.  “But I should tell you that everyone in Lochfoot is laughing about you and that Miss Simpson.  I don’t know if you’re making a fool of her, or she of you; but of one thing I have no doubt, Peter Pillans:  you’re making a fool of yourself.”

With that, she rose and left.

In the circumstances, I did not see any point in going to Glasgow after all.  Instead, I stayed at Castleside on the morrow and started the oat harvest.  For several days I was in the big field, cutting for hours; and, in the end, I had to miss a trip to Glasgow that we _had_ scheduled, for rain threatened and I had the last of the oats to cut.  As for Mr. Gair, he did come round one day that week; and I made him follow me as I walked through the field with my scythe.  I dare say that put a dampener on any angry words he felt like saying to me.

There was a terrible cold chill in the church that Sunday that had nothing to do with the weather.  Monday, Mrs. Taggart gave notice.  I told her that she was bound by contract to work out the month.

It was on my next trip down-the-line that Jessie and I encountered Minnie’s mother and one of her sisters as we walked along the road, heading for the park.  They, I think, were simply making an unannounced visit to Minnie.  I am sure that they were not there out of any intent to catch us, for it was clear that neither of them had any idea who I was.  Jessie introduced me, and said nothing of my coming from Lochfoot; so I could have been some gentleman she had met in town for all they knew.  Certainly Mrs. Guthrie was polite enough; and Minnie’s sister Alice seemed quite taken with me.  A couple of days later, though, as I stopped at Laurelbank on my milk round, Jessie met me with the news that Minnie’s mother had straitly forbade her—and, for that matter, her sisters, Alice and Hattie—from having anything to do with our courtship.  As Minnie was a married woman this quite surprised me; but it was clear that she was quite under the thumb of her mother.  At any rate, she had acquiesced to the stricture.

Jessie and I would thus no longer be able to meet in Glasgow.  We fell back, perforce, on our secret meetings in the top garden near the lane.  For a couple of weeks, this whetted our appetite for more without affording any way to satisfy it.  I even thought, once or twice, of ignoring Jessie’s qualms and addressing her father.  We had been courting now for nearly three months; and, while this was not especially long, our engagement could certainly be extended long enough for propriety to be satisfied.  It was not to be, though.  One Monday, when Jessie was bold enough to dally with me, talking, for more than half an hour, we were suddenly interrupted.  It was her older sister, Bessie, a good ten years her senior (for there were several children in between who had died young).  She was a crow of a woman, with a nose like a beak:  like their father’s, like Jessie’s, but not mitigated by a sweet voice and a smile.

Harsh and raw, Bessie cried, “Who are you?  Who _are_ you?  Jessie, go into the house.  Go immediately!  I shall tell Mother.  I shall tell Father.  How _dare_ you!”  And then again, to me, “Get off our property this instant, or I shall call the police.”

“You must go,” said Jessie, instantly afraid for me.

I turned to Bessie Simpson and said, “My name is Pillans, Peter Pillans.  I’ve been seeing your sister for several months now.”

“That makes it worse!” she cried.  “Oh, Jessie!  How could you deceive us all so cruelly?  You are a disgrace.”  This last was said in tones of contempt; and I could see poor Jessie wilt.

Though I tried to hold her, she shook off my hand and went down towards the house, not running (for ladies don’t), but certainly hurrying as fast as she could decently do.  I saw tears spring to her eyes as we parted; and I do not doubt that, by the time she arrived indoors, she was weeping.  “Greeting”, they say in Scotland.  I’d a greeting I’d like to give her sister, I can tell you; but I forebore to say or do what my impulse suggested.  It would not further my suit; and I had every intention, having been brought so rudely to this point, of braving the lion’s den—or the father’s study—and asking formally for Jessie’s hand in marriage.

So I went away quietly.  That afternoon, by the late post, a notification arrived from Mr. Simpson to say that Laurelbank would no longer be taking their milk from me.  I learned a few days later that, Castleside having the route, a gardener had to be sent daily to fetch their milk and cream and butter from another farm a couple of miles further away.  So I had some satisfaction for the nuisance it caused.

The next morning early, once the cans of milk were on the train, I loaded the cart for the milk round as usual and set off up the Crescent.  Laurelbank might have cancelled; but the other houses had not.  So I drove past the back gate and halted the horse, hoping that Jessie might come.  But she did not; and I dared not go inside to the garden lest I be taken up for trespass, or even attempted burlary or the like (for I wouldn’t put it past them to lie to get me in trouble).  I waited for a minute or two, and then clucked to the horse and drove on.

A day later, spruced in my Sunday best with my hair glossed with macassar oil, I walked over to Laurelbank by the street.  This time, I did not go at dawn but in the early evening, at a time when the businessmen and merchants of Lochview were arrived by train from down-the-line, and I could therefore reasonably expect to find Mr. Simpson at home.  I walked up the path from the front gate with a firm, expectant tread.  It was a laid path of stone, with swards of close-cropped lawn on either side, well kept by the gardeners, and nothing like the farmyard at Castleside; but I did not let it daunt me.  I rang the bell, loud and hard, and rehearsed once again in my mind what I would say to Jessie’s father when he saw me.

The door was opened by the butler.  I gave my name, formally; and he left me waiting on the step, while he considered.  Then, with an air of reluctance, he said, “Wait here while I see if the master is at home.”  The door shut.

Well, obviously he had to know if his employer were in the house or not.  I knew, therefore, that he actually meant that he was off to find if Jessie’s Da would turn me away or let me in to speak to him.  This was not truly unexpected.  That I should be left standing on the step, though, not even allowed inside to wait for my answer in the hall:  that griped me.  Still, I told myself that it was the impertinence of an upper servant (and I recalled Mr. Dawson’s butler, the night that Mrs. Wilson made her will).  I was sure—indeed, I _had_ to be sure, in my heart—that Mr. Simpson would hear me out.  My hopes would not be dashed, simply because of a butler.

And, indeed, I was right: the man returned some minutes later, opened the door once again, and let me over the threshold.  The house had _two_ doors, one inside the other, with a little space in between.  Fancy coloured glass was set into the inner door; and beyond that was the true hall.  It was thickly carpeted, in a way that one would never cover the hall of a farmhouse, even though I always scraped my boots before entering Castleside.  I was led, my feet sinking into the pile, off to one side, past the suit of armour of which Jessie had spoken, to a heavy mahogany door that was closed.  I expected the butler to knock; but he opened it, preceded me inside, and announced, “Mr. Pillans, sir.”  Then, as I advanced towards Mr. Simpson, seated behind an enormous desk, the butler left, closing the door behind him.

“Ah, Pillans,” said Jessie’s father.  “I might have known the likes of you would turn up at our front door.”

“I wish to speak with you,” I said, and found a faint unbecoming quaver in my voice.  Taking a firm grip on my nerves, I said more loudly, “about your daughter Jessica and my intentions towards her.”

“You _have_ no intentions towards her,” was the reply.  There was no anger in it, just hard certainty.  It was so obviously untrue—of course I had intentions, or why else would I come!—that I was unable to think of a response.  Before I could stammer something indignant, Mr. Simpson continued, “No intentions that are not an insult to my family and any good sense that you may possess.”

“I wish to marry Jessie,” I finally said.

He raised a brow.  “That would be ‘Miss Jessie’ to the likes of you, Pillans.  Keep a civil tongue in your head.  The politest way to put it, I suppose, is that you have aspirations beyond your station.  Let me make myself quite clear:  there is no way on God’s earth that any daughter of mine is going to marry the milkman.”

The _milkman?_   Fury took me, and I took a short step forward.  _The milkman?!!_   He did not flinch, though I trust I looked menacing in my anger.

“Milkman?” I managed to say.  “I think you mistake me, sir.  I am the owner of Castlefield Farm, and not the employee of some city dairy.  I have land, a freehold property I’ll have you know.  I’m no mere tenant farmer.  I—”

“I know who you are,” said Simpson, in measured firm tones.  “I have had inquiries made; and I know your history—and a very doubtful history it is, indeed.  If you were a _gentleman_ with such a history (and your farm a good sound business in my own line), I would have equal reluctance to entertain this … ‘suit’ of yours.”  There was a slight sneer in his voice.  “And you are no gentleman,” he added.  “Milkman I call you, for milkman you are.  You deliver our milk.”  At this point, his sneer was obvious.

“If you think Castlefield is not a business—” I began, ready to bring forth a list of my assets and profits that should please him.

He slapped his hand on the top of his big, heavy desk.  “Enough!”  He reached for a braided strap that hung behind him on the wall.  Faintly, far away, I thought I heard a bell.  “This interview is at an end.  You will leave now; and you shall not trouble my family again.”

The door opened behind me.  I did not turn; but I knew that it had to be that butler standing there.

“Show Pillans out.”

I stood for a long moment, unwilling to accept the situation.

“This way, please,” came the calm tones of the butler behind me.

I still did not move.

Mr. Simpson regarded me, in my defiance, and gave me a cold, level stare.  “Do you expect me to write you a cheque and pay you off, is that it?  I know that there is only one reason you want my daughter.  _She_ fancies herself in love; but I have no illusions about _you_.”  He sat back calmly, leaning against the stuffed leather of the chair, a little smile on his lips.  “Right.  So here it is:  I’ll let you decide.  Jessie may be a fool—she’s only a girl, after all—but I doubt if _you_ are.  Let me make myself quite clear:  if she weds you, she does so without my blessing.  My door will be shut to her, and to you.  She will be cut from my will.”  He leaned forward, and said with meaning, “She will have no dowry from me.  There will be no money.”

I was struck dumb.  He relaxed, and then repeated, “Yes, there will be no money.  If you wed her, you get _her_ and nothing more.  You understand?”

I still could say nothing.  He nodded, and looked past me to the butler.  “Show him out,” he said.

The butler did not speak.  I hesitated; but only for a moment.  I had seen the mettle of the man; and it was metal, and hard iron.  There would be no money:  I believed him.

I left.  Quietly, with no further protest for there would be no point.  I believed him.

I made no attempt to contact Jessie.  That Sunday in church, I saw her with her family in their pew; but she was kept close-guarded when people left after the sermon and hymns were over.  Though she cast me an imploring, pleading look, there was no point in trying the defences.  The castle might not be impregnable; but it had no treasure … not for me.

Inside, of course, I seethed—less for the loss of Jessie and my plans for our future, than for the attitude and tone with which her father had dismissed me.  And also, not a little, for my impotence in the face of his dismissal:  I thought over what he had said, and what I had said; and, above all, I thought of all that I had _not_ said.  In retrospect, I could tell myself all the arguments that had not, at the time, even crossed my mind.  I had been awed, by Laurelbank itself as much as Old Simpson.

Rumour ran round, again:  the butler told his tale, no doubt.  (He was probably listening at the keyhole.)  Servants talk to servants.  Within days, just as everyone in the area had known I was courting Jessie, so they all knew how our relationship ended.  I did not _hear_ their sniggers.  I didn’t need to.  I knew they hated me, and were glad to see me brought low.

I hated them, and their knowing stares in church.

I wanted them dead.  All of them, starting with Old Simpson and his fancy butler, and running down through the folk of the town, the Gairs’ neighbours in the village, the people from all the nearby farms, and Mrs. Taggart, working out the last days of her employment with me.  I wanted them _dead_ , and rotting in a ditch:  Jessie Simpson with her airs and flirtations; Mattie Gair, wherever she might be now she was dismissed as scullery-maid and run off from Lochfoot; all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day.  I wanted them _all_ dead, if I hanged for it.

Not that I’d a way to destroy them.  Not that I wanted to hang.

I walked back to Castleside that Sunday.  As I walked, my heat chilled.  I thought of what lay ahead: I needed to advertise for another housekeeper; and, given the feeling of the town, I suspected I might find Mrs. Taggart difficult to replace.  How would I manage the farm without help?  How would I deal with the dairy?

I ate my cold dinner alone, and then got out paper and ink, dipped a pen, and began to write a letter.

> _To the directors of the Caledonian Railway,_
> 
> _Sirs,_
> 
> _It is my understanding that your company has, for some time, been hoping to establish a railway depot in Lochfoot, near Glasgow. Thus far, I believe, it has proved impossible for you to acquire the necessary land to create such premises._
> 
> _If I may introduce myself, my name is Pillans and I am the owner of Castleside Farm, a freehold property just outside the town of Lochfoot. You may be interested to learn that I am wishful to sell some fields near the loch…._

After all, it is hard work, farming.

I could see myself in time selling not just the land for the depot, but throwing up a building to house the Irish navvies who would build it.  I could see public houses, where such hard-bitten men might drink and be merry (and make a nuisance of themselves to our good local constable).  Then would come tenements for the families of the men who would work at the depot, with shops to sell them the cheapest of goods.  They would sit in their shoddy in the pews behind the gentry of Lochview; and their louse-ridden children would take lessons cheek by jowl with the children of the farmers and Villagers.  They would swear and steal and fornicate—the worst dregs of Glasgow, come amongst the good folk of Lochfoot.  “Not that I’d a way to destroy them”?  Was that what I’d thought?  There are worse fates than death:  longer, slower ways to make them all pay.  The smoke of the trains would blacken the town, brick and body and soul.  I shall start a shop, I decided, to sell such secondhand goods as the incomers could afford.  Thus I might observe the degradation of Lochfoot from close at hand.

 _That_ will spoil the vistas from the mansions of the Crescent, I thought, as I blotted the paper.  I folded it and fitted it into an envelope, addressed it care of the Central Station in Glasgow, and found a penny stamp.


End file.
